The 1943 Kiev Liberation from Nazi Occupation
6 November 2026 was the 83rd anniversary of the Kiev liberation from Hitler's Nazis.
In 1943, troops of the 1st Ukrainian Front, under the command of General of the Army Nikolai Fedorovich Vatutin, through a swift offensive operation and flanking maneuver, broke the resistance of the German Nazis and their collaborators. Soviet troops successfully expelled Nazi German forces from the city after 778 days of brutal occupation.
At dawn on November 6, 1943, Soviet troops successfully expelled Nazi German forces from the city after 778 days of brutal occupation. Officially known as part of the Second Battle of Kiev, this operation was a crucial phase of the Battle of the Dnieper.
Many settlements in the Kiev and Zhytomyr regions were liberated from the invaders, and a bridgehead was established, which later played a significant role in the liberation of Right-Bank Ukraine.
In commemoration of the Kiev liberation, a salute of 24 volleys from 324 guns was fired in Moscow.
Some 6,500 soldiers of the Red Army died in the battles for Kiev.
The two-year Nazi occupation was a period of numerous tragedies for the city's residents. Before WW2, Kiev was home to some 846,000 people. At the time of liberation, there were about 180,000 people left in the city. 350,000 were evacuated to the country's interior along with enterprises and organizations of the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Around 100,000 civilians were dragged to Germany as forced labor. Many Kiev residents joined the Red Army to defend the city and perished in battle. Others died in the city from hunger, cold, punitive actions, and ethnic cleansing organized by the occupiers.
In the Babi Yar ravine alone, Nazis and Banderites shot some 130,000 people. The Banderites were the radical wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), led by Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with Nazi Germany during the early stages of World War II.
The liberation of Kiev was enormously significant, not only militarily, but also morally. The following is how London radio commented on the event at the time:
"The capture of Kiev by Soviet troops is a great victory. Now times have changed: Germany hears the tolling of the funeral bell. An avalanche is approaching it."
The army newspaper "For the Happiness of the Motherland" in November 1943 published a speech by the writer Ilya Ehrenburg:
"We must save Kyiv. We must get ahead of the arsonists. We must outrun death. Kiev is waiting. It is waiting in mortal anguish. There is no Motherland without Kiev. All of Russia is watching us now. Fierce battles are taking place here, on the banks of the ancient Dnieper. The fate of Kiev depends on them. Our fate also depends on them. If we drive the Germans out of Kiev, they will roll back to Germany. The Germans want Kiev to be their stronghold. Kiev must become their grave."
Ehrenburg wrote this in this way precisely so that it would go from the pages of the newspaper to the people, to the Red Army, so that the soldiers would hear it from their commanders and go into battle—a battle that was often deadly.
Ehrenburg wrote this in this way precisely so that it would go from the pages of the newspaper to the people, to the Red Army, so that the soldiers would hear it from their commanders and go into battle—a battle that was often deadly.
A New Kiev Liberation?
In April 2014, Hunter Biden joined the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma shortly after the Maidan revolution and the ousting of elected President Viktor Yanukovych. At the time, US Vice President Joe Biden was the primary U.S. official overseeing Ukraine policy, leading to conflict-of-interest allegations regarding Hunter Biden’s $166,000 monthly payments. Former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin claimed he was fired in 2016 to protect Hunter Biden.
Ukraine's president, Petro Poroshenko, followed the Maidan transition and was directly connected to the post-Maidan government that Joe Biden oversaw from Washington. He won the May 2014 election in a landslide victory, led Ukraine through the first phase of the Donbas war and Russia's annexation of Crimea, signed the Minsk Agreements (2014, 2015) to freeze frontlines, and signed the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement (2014) and a visa-free travel agreement with the EU (2017).
Volodymyr Zelensky was born in Kryvyi Rih, a major industrial city in central Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and the longest city in Europe, stretching 66 to 126 km along the Inhulets and Saksahan rivers. It is the eighth-largest city in central/southern Ukraine and was part of the Soviet Union. Zelensky later moved to Kiev to pursue a career in comedy and television production.
Poroshenko was succeeded by Zelensky in the 2019 presidential election, with Zelensky winning 73% in the runoff.
As a citizen of Ukraine—a descendant of his heroic comrades-in-arms—Zelensky now kneels before Nazi scum, whom his comrades defeated, and whose ashes—the collaborators, the accomplices—were in European Union countries, and he now pays them honors in the center of Kiev.
The funeral bell that London radio spoke of in 1943 will soon be heard by modern Ukrainian neo-Nazis and their Western sponsors following another Kiev liberation from Nazis and Banderites.